Sylvia Ann Hewlett

Sylvia Ann Hewlett is the founding president and CEO of the Center for Talent Innovation and the founding partner of Hewlett Consulting Partners LLC. She’s also the co-director of the Women’s Leadership Program at the Columbia Business School and a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and the Century Association. An economist with 20 years of experience in global talent management, Hewlett has particularly focused on the “power of difference” and the challenges and opportunities faced by women, minorities and other previously excluded groups. She has forged a signature style of enquiry which blends hard data and rigorous analysis with concrete solutions and on-the-ground action. She is the author of eleven Harvard Business Review articles and twelve critically acclaimed books, including When the Bough Breaks (winner of a Robert F. Kennedy Memorial Book Award); Off-Ramps and On-Ramps; Winning the War for Talent in Emerging Markets; Forget a Mentor, Find a Sponsor (named one of the best business books of 2013 by the Globe and Mail and winner of the 2014 Axiom book award); and Executive Presence: The Missing Link Between Merit and Success (an Amazon “Best Book of the Month,” June 2014). In 2014 she was recognized as the Most Influential International Thinker by HR magazine and was honored by the European Diversity Awards with its Global Diversity Award. Her writings have appeared in the New York Times, Financial Times, and Wall Street Journal, she’s a featured blogger on the HBR Blog Network. In 2011 she received the Isabel Benham Award from the Women’s Bond Club, and a Women of the Year Award from the Financial Women’s Association, and in 2013 she received a Work Life Legacy Award from the Families and Work Institute. Hewlett has taught at Cambridge, Columbia, and Princeton universities and has held fellowships at the Institute for Public Policy Research in London and the Center for the Study of Values in Public Life at Harvard. In the 1980s she became the first woman to head the Economic Policy Council, a nonprofit composed of 125 business and labor leaders. Hewlett is a sought-after speaker on the international stage. She has keynoted International Women’s Day at the IMF, given the featured address at Pfizer’s Emerging Markets Leadership Summit in Dubai, and spoken at the White House. She is a frequent guest on TV and radio programs, appearing on The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer, Charlie Rose, ABC World News Tonight, The Today Show, The View, BBC World News, and Talk of the Nation—and she has been lampooned on Saturday Night Live. A Kennedy Scholar and graduate of Cambridge University, Hewlett earned her PhD in economics at London University.